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Reed City's Xavier Allen glides to the basket against the Chippewa Hills defense during Monday's Division 2 district playoff game at Big Rapids.
John Raffel/Pioneer photo
BIG RAPIDS – Reed City fired out to a 20-0 lead after the first quarter against Chippewa Hills and proceeded to a Division 2 first-round 62-30 district win at BRHS on Monday, March 6.
The Coyotes beat the Warriors 52-38 during the regular season. The season ends for Chippewa Hills (10-12).
Cooper Bonham scored Chippewa Hills’ first basket to open the second but Max Hammond followed with a triple for Reed City. It was 29-4 at halftime with Ty Kailing leading the Reed City attack with nine points
“We played great from the start,” Reed City coach Brennan Walsh said. “To hold a team to four points in a half, you can’t ask for much more than that. The boys played with great energy.”
Kailing had a slam dunk in the third for a 35-6 lead. It was 44-14 after the third quarter.
Gage Saathoff had a triple for the Warrior to cut the RC lead to 46-17 early in the fourth.
Dylan Walsh scored two baskets for CH but it was a comfortable 51-19 cushion for RC.
Hammond and Kailing scored 11 points apiece. Teddy Szymanski had eight for the Coyotes.
“We did our best to not look past these guys and play good basketball,” Walsh said, while adding these comments prior to the game “we have to believe in ourselves and play for each other. Not much has come easy for us this season, maybe we have some good luck stored up and coming our way.”
Tyler Jones had eight points and Matthew Brownell had seven points for the Warriors.
The key to having success, in this and other games, Allen said, “is our transition game and our defense and forcing turnovers.
“Our season has gone all right,” Allen said. “We dropped a couple of tough ones we probably shouldn’t have lost. We played crappy in some games but you’ll have that as a team.”
Chippewa Hills’ Gage Saathoff said his team was happy with improvements shown this season but were disappointed with recent games.
Manton 52, Pine River 35
LAKE CITY – Pine River had its season come to an ended with this district semifinal loss to Manton in Division 3 play on Monday at Lake City.
Both teams are now 8-14 but only Manton will be playing on Wednesday in the next round.
Manton had quarter leads of 13-6, 23-16 and 36-33 and outscored the Bucks 16-2 in the final quarter.
“Unfortunately, tonight was kind of a synopsis of our season,” Bucks coach Brian Goodenow said. “We didn’t shoot it well, didn’t defend or rebound very well, and turned the ball over way too many times. We made a run in the third quarter but just fell flat and probably ran out of gas in the fourth. All credit to Coach Herlein and the Rangers. They deserved to win tonight.
“I’m very appreciative of my seniors Evan Esiline, Tim Gum, Austin Dean and Dante Fauble. They never took a day off and they always worked very hard. We’ll miss their leadership.”
